SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 4 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Vasily Petrenko 13th September, with the first movement complete in all encompassing, even reckless yet magnificent statement Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) essentials by early December and its successor at the of artistic intent. Symphony No. 4 turn of January 1936. In spite of the condemnatory This belated première, by Kondrashin and the Moscow Pravda article ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ on the 28th of Philharmonic Orchestra in Moscow on 30th December The fifteen symphonies of Dmitry Shostakovich presently Trauberg’s Alone [Naxos 8.570316] and Lev Arshtam’s that month, Shostakovich outwardly recovered quickly 1961, was followed by the UK première from Gennady stand at the very centre of the orchestral repertoire: The Girlfriends – as well as incidental music for Adrian from the attendant fall-out – finishing the finale’s short Rozhdestvensky and the Philharmonia Orchestra at the together with those of Mahler, they can fairly be said to Pyotrovsky’s Rule, Britannia! [both on 8.572138] and score on 26th April and its orchestration by 20th May. Edinburgh Festival on 7th September 1962 (programmed represent ‘modern’ music as it appears to the non- Nikolay Akimov’s controversial production of Hamlet. Word had already spread of the work’s epic scale and with and greatly preferred to the Twelfth Symphony), with specialist concertgoer. Yet unlike any comparable There were also full-length ballet collaborations – with emotional scope, with Otto Klemperer responding to the the American première by Eugene Ormandy and the symphonic cycle since that of Beethoven, these works do Alexander Ivanovsky on The Golden Age [8.570217-18], composer’s playing extracts on 31st May by pledging to Philadelphia Orchestra following in Philadelphia on 15th not progress in a way that might have endowed their Viktor Smirnov on The Bolt [Suite on 8.555949] and perform it in South America the following season. The February 1963. Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic career-spanning inclusivity with a logical evolution which Fyodor Lopukhov on The Limpid Stream. Extracts from première itself was entrusted to Fritz Stiedry and the made the first commercial recording between the 3rd and carries them from aspiration to fulfilment. numerous of these scores were freely transferred, certain Leningrad Philharmonic, and scheduled for 11th 15th February 1962 at the Large Hall of the Moscow Of the symphonies, the First is a graduation work that pieces – not least the First Jazz Suite [8.555949] – December. That morning, however, brought an official Conservatoire, followed by Ormandy and the Philadelphia quickly accorded the teenage composer national acclaim becoming ‘hits’ in their own right. A more serious side was announcement that the composer had withdrawn the work in February 1963. Doubtless reflecting its respected though and then international prominence. The Second and Third evident in the Six Romances on Japanese Poems and, as it was now incompatible with his current creative still equivocal standing, there were no further recordings both represent the reckless accommodation between above all, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District – the concerns. until André Previn and the Chicago Symphony in February modernist means and revolutionary ends, while the opera after Nikolay Leskov that saw success in Leningrad Just what were the events conspiring to seal the 1977, followed by Bernard Haitink and the London Fourth stakes out the boundary between the individual and Moscow, and acclaim in Cleveland and London, work’s fate have been much debated but it seems that, Philharmonic in January 1979, then Rozhdestvensky and and society that was to remain a focal point thereafter. before the infamous Pravda article that decided both its having rehearsed the first two movements without much the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra early The Fifth clarifies that boundary through paradoxically fate and that of Shostakovich’s future career. He had in the way of incident, Stiedry encountered overt during 1986 – by which time the work had all but entered making it even more equivocal; a process that the Sixth already re-engaged with abstract composition – antagonism from the musicians during the finale to an the repertoire and was regarded among the seminal continues by subverting the ‘private/public’ relationship composing the 24 Preludes for piano [8.555781] and the extent that Shostakovich, having spoken to the conductor, twentieth-century symphonies. still further. The Seventh is an unequivocal reaction to civil First Piano Concerto [8.553126] in 1933, then a Cello chose to avoid a potential scandal by literally taking the The Fourth Symphony is scored for the most conflict and social collapse that finds its conceptual Sonata [8.557231 or 8.557722] in 1934, during which year score with him as he left the building – though it is also extensive forces of any Shostakovich symphony: two equivalent in the Eighth, and which in turn finds its he also began a new symphony. likely the orchestra’s director Isai Renzin had prevailed piccolos, four flutes, four flutes (one doubling cor anglais), opposite in the Ninth. The Tenth effectively marks the Shostakovich had long intended to consolidate the upon the composer to withdraw the piece before his hand five clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons and contra- genre’s culmination as the outlet for an abstract promise of his First Symphony [8.572396] with a more was forced by ‘official’ pressure. After this, the symphony bassoon, eight horns, four trumpets, three trombones and programme. The Eleventh initiates a period in which inclusive statement than either of its successors, though was shelved though not forgotten – Shostakovich and two tubas, six timpani (two players) and percussion (six Russian concerns were to assume dominance, its deciding how to do so was no easy task. His first attempt Pavel Lamm having already made a reduction for two players), celesta, two harps and strings (84 desks historical acuity being diluted by the relative impersonality in the autumn of 1934 got no further than the seven- pianos that was circulated and even lithographed in 1946, recommended). The first movement is a complex and of the Twelfth and then intensified by the undeniable minute fragment of a first movement, whose brooding after a private performance by the composer and unpredictable take on sonata-form design, while its explicitness of the Thirteenth. The Fourteenth stands slow introduction for solo woodwind and strings followed Mieczysław Weinberg. The full score had been lost – successor deftly elides between scherzo and intermezzo, outside the symphonic genre as regards its form though by an energetic tutti (partially reused in the completed presumed destroyed – in the siege of Leningrad several then the finale integrates four disparate yet audibly related emphatically not in terms of content, while the Fifteenth work’s finale) suggests Myaskovsky as a viable mentor, years earlier, but was subsequently reconstructed from sections in an imaginative process of variation which marks a belated re-engagement with an abstract but Shostakovich may have felt this approach the orchestral parts by Boris Shalman and its culminates in one of its composer’s most far-reaching approach to symphonic thinking such as might or might insufficiently forward-looking. By April 1935 he was performance mooted at various stages in the post-Stalin apotheoses. not have been continued. speaking of the new symphony as embodying his artistic era until, in 1961, Kyrill Kondrashin (having seen a piano The first movement opens with a shrill fanfare-like The six-year period between the Third and Fourth ‘credo’, though the first evidence was Five Fragments for duet reduction by the composer’s amanuensis Lev motif on woodwind with brass and percussion, thrice Symphonies (the second longest between any in the chamber orchestra [8.557812] written at a single session Atovmyan) undertook the task. Despite having spoken on repeated, that reappears transformed at the start of each composer’s canon) saw Shostakovich focussing on music on 9th June (and which remained unheard for nearly three several occasions about revising the work, Shostakovich of its successors. Here it heads into a trenchant martial for the theatre, with several innovative scores for films – decades), whose striking sonorities and textures pointedly chose to leave it just as it was: an all- theme for brass over tramping strings, making reference notably those for Grigory Kozintsev’s and Leonid anticipate what was to come. Work began in earnest on to the initial motif at its height before it subsides – via woodwind, after which bird-like calls on violin presage the gruff response from double basses, bringing about the At which point (20’30”) a striding motion on both sets echoing horns and animated strings, into the leisurely latter’s taking up the second theme over lower strings and second part of the movement: a toccata of unremitting of timpani suddenly explodes into a fusillade that second theme whose imitative unfolding on strings is harp. It dies away disconsolately, only for the first theme momentum that is confirmed by the animated theme on underpins a peroration as overwhelming as it is countered with ominous responses from woodwind and to emerge on bassoon over a steady accompaniment on strings. Its contrapuntal interplay reduces to ceaselessly inexorable. On three occasions an impassioned fanfare percussion. Brass now initiates a strenuous interplay bass drum. Cor anglais partners it in the closing stages, alternating phrases on woodwind and strings, then to from brass is answered by a granitic chorale on horns and drawing on both themes, which reaches a powerful climax while a sudden eruption on this theme from clarinets, interlocking string ostinatos of almost minimalist cast, strings, with the fourth fanfare bringing a strenuous before subsiding as before into lower woodwind. A muted trumpets and harps denotes the onset of the brief before the previous activity resumes and an energetic confrontation between all sections of the orchestra.